Conservatives deal with facts and reach conclusions; liberals have conclusions and sell them as facts.

Re North Korea, the PowerLine guys think we’re being taken to the cleaners, but we won’t end up dead

I’ve been wondering whether North Korea’s unusually heightened war rhetoric means that the missiles will really start to fly. Over at PowerLine, Steven Hayward has a different theory, which is depressing, but less worrisome. He thinks that Kim Jong-Un is no fool, and that he recognizes that the troika of Obama, Kerry, and Hagel is the negotiating equivalent of the Three Stooges. He will push them around until their little spines flop over completely, and then come back with unusually excessive demands, to which they will gratefully acquiesce:

Skip past Barack Obama for a moment, and just take in the secretary of defense, and the secretary of state. Chuck Hagel. John Kerry. Take a deep breath here. Put yourself in the shoes of the Norks. These guys make the British appeasers of the 1930s look like Chuck Norris. Think the Norks haven’t paid attention to these guys? Add in Obama’s obvious liberal guilt and what conclusion would you reach? Even a 28-year old Kim, educated in private schools in Switzerland but moreover schooled in the Nork blackmail drill, will draw the obvious conclusion: time to go for broke and take the U.S. to the cleaners, because its leadership right now is ripe for the plucking. Far from being crazy, Kim Jong Un may be the most rational person around right now.

Both those scenarios make more sense than North Korea willingly destroying itself, and they make sense in terms of the team that Obama has assembled over in the Foggy Bottom, and foggy brain, neighborhood.

Only time will tell, of course. We little people can’t influence events; we can just watch them unfold.

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Makes sense. Who was the Pacific commander who rated climate change as more threatening to our national defense than North Korea? So it’s not like the commanders on the ground will be providing good advice.
They all have their eyes off the ball. So its time to pick up some yardage.

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